IT ADVISERS (EXAMPLE IT BUSINESS PLAN)

[Pages:14]Powered by Business Planning Software

Sample Business Plan

IT ADVISERS (EXAMPLE IT BUSINESS PLAN)

2012 - 2014

22/02/2013 09:40:33(UTC)

Executive Summary ............................................................................................................ 3 Company Overview ............................................................................................................. 4 Products and Services ........................................................................................................ 5

Pricing and Sales ................................................................................................................ 6 Marketing Strategy .............................................................................................................. 7

Competition ........................................................................................................................ 8 Management and Staffing .................................................................................................. 8 Implementation..................................................................................................................... 9 Financial Projections ......................................................................................................... 10

Get started with your plan now! -

Executive Summary

IT-Advisers will be formed as a consulting company specializing in marketing of information technology and hi-tech products in international markets. Its founders are former marketers of consulting services, cloud-based software and market research, all in international markets. They are founding IT-Advisers to formalize the consulting services they offer.

Mission IT Advisers (ITA) offers high-tech manufacturers and IT-companies a reliable, high quality alternative to in-house resources for business development, market research and channel development on an international scale.

A true alternative to in house resources offers a very high level of practical experience, know how, contacts and confidentiality. Clients must know that working with ITA is a more professional, less risky way to develop new areas even than working completely in house with their own people. ITA must also be able to maintain financial balance, charging a high value for its services and delivering an even higher value to its clients. Initial focus will be development in the European and Latin American markets, or for European clients in the United States market.

Keys to Success

1. Excellence in fulfilling the promise completely confidential, reliable, trustworthy expertise and information.

2. Developing visibility to generate new business leads. 3. Leveraging from a single pool of expertise into multiple revenue generation

opportunities: retainer consulting, project consulting, market research, and market research published reports.

This is a sample business plan created with business planning software application.

Main financial measures

Cash Sales revenue Net profit for financial year Operating margin Owners' equity Return on equity (per year)

2012 3,422

1,175,000 -112,509 -9.58% 22,491 -500%

2013 52,939

1,800,000 76,547 4.25%

159,038 48.1%

2014 114,404

2,450,000 210,178 8.58% 349,216 60.2%

3

Company Overview

IT Advisers (ITA) is a new company providing high-level expertise in international high-tech business development, channel development, distribution strategies and marketing of high tech products. It will focus initially on providing two kinds of international triangles:

1. Providing United States clients with development for European and Latin American markets.

2. Providing United Kingdom and European clients with development for the US and Latin American markets.

4

As it grows it will take on people and consulting work in related markets, such as the rest of Latin America and the Far East, also similar markets. As it grows it will look for additional leverage by taking brokerage positions and representation positions to create percentage holdings in product results.

ITA will be created as a California C corporation based in San Jose, owned by its principal investors and principal operators. As of this writing it has not been chartered yet and is still considering alternatives of legal formation. The initial office will be established in a quality office space in the "Silicon Valley" area of California, the heart of the U.S. high tech and software industry.

ITA offers expertise in channel distribution, channel development, software and market development, sold and packaged in various ways that allow clients to choose their preferred relationship: these include small business consulting relationships, project based consulting, relationship and alliance brokering, sales representation and market representation, projectbased market research, published market research and information forum events.

Pic 1. ITA Headquarters

Products and Services

ITA offers the expertise a IT-company needs to develop new product distribution and new market segments in new markets. This can be taken as high-level retainer consulting, market research reports, software applications and/or project-based consulting.

Retainer consulting - we represent a client company as an extension of its business development and market development functions. This begins with complete understanding of the client company's situation, objectives, business plan, and constraints. We then represent the client company quietly and confidentially, sifting through new market developments and new opportunities as is appropriate to the client, representing the client in initial talks with possible allies, vendors and channels.

Project consulting - Proposed and billed on a per-project and per- milestone basis, project consulting offers a client company a way to harness our specific qualities and use our expertise to solve specific problems, develop and write business plans, develop specific information, software.

5

Market research - group studies available to selected clients at $5,000 per unit. A group study is packaged and published, a complete study of a specific market, channel, or topic. Examples might be studies of developing consumer channels in Brazil or Mexico, or implications of changing margins in software.

In the future ITA will broaden the coverage by expanding into coverage of additional markets (e.g. all of Latin America, Far East, Western Europe) and additional product areas (e.g. telecommunications, web-based software and technology integration). We are also studying the possibility of newsletter or electronic newsletter services, or perhaps special on- topic reports.

Pricing and Sales

ITA (IT-Advisers) will be priced at the upper edge of what the market will bear, competing with the name brand consultants.

Consulting should be based on $5,000 per day for project consulting, $2,000 per day for market research, and $10,000 per month and up for retainer consulting. Market research reports should be priced at $5,000 per report, which will of course require that reports be very well planned, focused on very important topics very well presented.

The annual sales projections, gross margins and cost of sales are included here in the following tables.

Sales revenue (USD)

Products and services Retainer Consulting Project Consulting Market Research Strategic Reports and Software

Gross margin (%)

Products and services Retainer Consulting Project Consulting Market Research Strategic Reports and Software

Cost of sales (USD)

Products and services Retainer Consulting Project Consulting Market Research Strategic Reports and Software

2012 400,000 500,000 200,000 75,000

1,175,000

2013 650,000 750,000 300,000 100,000

1,800,000

2014 1,000,000 900,000 400,000 150,000

2,450,000

2012 85 85 30 70

2013 85 85 30 70

2014 85 85 30 70

2012 60,000 75,000

140,000 22,500

297,500

2013 97,500

112,500 210,000

30,000 450,000

2014 150,000 135,000 280,000 45,000 610,000

6

Break-even analysis (USD)

Sales revenue Cost of sales

Variable expenses, total Labour cost Other operating expenses Depreciation of fixed assets Financial expenses

Fixed expenses, total Gross margin Break-even sales revenue Sales revenue above break-even

2012 1,175,000

297,500 297,500 727,260 265,000

5,000 5,250 1,002,510 74.7% 1,342,391

0

2013 1,800,000

450,000 450,000 897,000 322,500

15,000 30,448 1,264,948

75% 1,686,597

113,403

2014 2,450,000

610,000 610,000 1,110,900 455,000

15,000 25,569 1,606,469 75.1% 2,139,049 310,951

Marketing Strategy

ITA will be focusing on information technology manufacturers of computer hardware and software, services, networking, who want to sell into markets in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Latin America. These are mostly larger companies, and occasionally medium-sized companies.

Our most important group of potential customers are executives in larger corporations. These are marketing managers, general managers, sales managers, sometimes charged with international focus and sometimes charged with market or even specific channel focus. They do not want to waste their time or risk their money looking for bargain information or questionable expertise. As they go into markets looking at new opportunities, they are very sensitive to risking their company's name and reputation.

The consulting industry is pulverized and disorganized, thousands of smaller consulting organizations and individual consultants for every one of the few dozen well-known companies.Consulting is a disorganized industry, with participants ranging from major international name brand consultants to tens of thousands of individuals. One of ITA's challenges will be establishing itself as a "real" consulting company, positioned as a relatively risk free corporate purchase.

At the highest level are the few well established major names in management consulting. Most of these are organized as partnerships established in major markets around the world, linked together by interconnecting directors and sharing the name and corporate wisdom. Some evolved from accounting companies and some from management consulting. These companies charge very high rates for consulting and maintain relatively high overhead structures and fulfillment structures based on partners selling and junior associates fulfilling. At the intermediate level are some function specific or market specific consultants, such as the market research firms or channel development firms.

7

Market segmentation

Large manufacturer corporations - our most important market segment is the large manufacturer of high-technology products, such as Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft. These companies will be calling on ITA for development functions that are better spun off than managed in-house, and for market research, and for market forums.

Medium sized growth companies: particularly in software, multimedia, and some related high growth fields, ITA will be able to offer an attractive development alternative to the company that is management constrained and unable to address opportunities in new markets and new market segments.

Competition

The competition comes in several forms:

1. The most significant competition is no consulting at all, companies choosing to do business development, planning and channel development and market research inhouse. Their own managers do this on their own, as part of their regular business functions. Our key advantage in competition with in-house development is that managers are already overloaded with responsibilities, they don't have time for additional responsibilities in new market development or new channel development. Also, ITA can approach alliances, vendors, and channels on a confidential basis, gathering information and making initial contacts in ways that the corporate managers can't.

2. The high-level prestige management consulting: McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, etc. These are essentially generalists who take their name-brand management consulting into specialty areas. Their other very important weakness is the management structure that has the partners selling new jobs, and inexperienced associates delivering the work. We compete against them as experts in our specific fields, and with the guarantee that our clients will have the top-level people doing the actual work.

3. The third general kind of competitor is the international market research company: Dataquest, Stanford Research Institute, etc. These companies are formidable competitors for published market research and market forums, but cannot provide the kind of high-level consulting that ITA will provide.

4. The fourth kind of competition is the market-specific smaller house. For example: Nomura Research in Japan.

5. Sales representation, brokering and deal catalysts are an ad-hoc business form that will be defined in detail by the specific nature of each individual case.

Management and Staffing

The initial management team depends on the founders themselves, with little back-up. As we grow we will take on additional consulting help, plus graphic/editorial, sales, and marketing. ITA should be mainly managed by working partners. In the beginning we assume 3-5 partners. We will invite one international partner from Europe. The organization has to be

8

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download